You don't need to write King Lear or invent gravity. Just surviving will be a miracle enough.
I get the tone you're trying to convey, but a 98% event isn't a miracle.
Most of us will live through this. Yes, the world will be a bit different, but different is not always worse. There may be some good things to come out of this around the world.
Keep calm. Wash your hands. Wear masks if you got 'em. Help out your friends and neighbors where you can.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/30/health/coronavirus-lower-deat...
If you're under 50 or healthy, it's effectively 100%.
That's not to minimize the very real human tragedy though. Just a bit of context. Remember that 650,000 people die of heart disease every year, and a lot of those deaths are preventable.
Glass is half empty for you then, right?
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/01/coronavirus-could-kill-more-...
Several million worldwide seems very possible. People downplaying this for too long is a large part of why it's gotten so bad already.
Why worry? There's only 15 cases in the US. Why worry? There's only 15 cases in my state. Why worry? There's only 15 cases in my county.
Who knows what it will look like in 2 weeks.
Anyone would recognize that kind of growth as a breakout success if it were users on an app, but somehow they don't recognize the pattern with a disease.
I know that this will make it sooner than we thought for some, but for those who are going to die from this, this was always going to be their death date. I'm not trying to be insensitive and I'm not saying we shouldn't try our hardest to mitigate problems. We absolutely should. But when problems happen, lamenting has it's place, but only does so much good before it starts to do harm.
Does it work for everyone? No. Of course not.
But a "fuck this"? Why? If it works for people, good, if not, move on. No reason to bring down someone for trying.
You'd have to be willfully misinterpreting the intent to think this was aimed at people dealing with personal loss.
I get the guy's intent. Some people will like and be excited by this. Some people will feel sad and guilty. But even if he only had the first group in mind, he's addressing the whole world. The reaction from ecopoesis is a valid one, because it's not the message he needs. Where we aim doesn't matter as much as what we hit.
It would take some serious self righteousness to take this as a message to the former.
The issue I had with the response was the direct attack on the author's intent e.g. "fuck this".
There are plenty of other comments that state their disagreement or why it didn't land with them without taking it to the level of shutting down the op.
I don't understand the need to diminish the attempt at a potentially helpful mindset. It's helpful to some, pointless for others.
"Fuck this" is not an attack on the author's intent. it's a valid reaction to how it lands for some readers. If the pressure is nonexistent for you, great! But people other than you are also reading it.
Is it okay for me to just shed the equal amount of tears, or are people then going to accuse me of being emotionally stunted?
In the last 5 days (data from CSSEGISandData) the total number of deaths (excluding china) has doubled from 20679 to 38798.
In the 5 days before that, the total number of deaths (excluding china) also doubled.
So worldwide (excluding china) the total number of deaths looks like this:
In 5 days: 77,596
In 10 days: 155,192
In 15 days: 310,384
In 20 days: 620,768
In 25 days: 1,241,536
And I as well hope things are changing quickly...
Maybe. So far only a few thousand have died so how about toning down the fearmongering hysteria? Also, 60 million people die every year. Every single year with or without the pandemic. Actually, it's more likely we'll have a lower death total around the world as a result of this pandemic as quarantine has prevented people from dying in car crashes, other diseases, etc.
> It's very likely some of your friends and family will be in that number.
No. It's very unlikely even in your worst case scenario. Unless you have the loosest definition of "friends".
> The world we get out of this is going to be different and it's going to be a worse one for almost everyone.
The world isn't going to be different. People are still going to eat, sleep, go to work, etc. Life will go on. Just like it did after the spanish flu, ww2, vietnam war, iraq wars, 9/11, etc.
> Just surviving will be a miracle enough.
Oh god. Stop watching the news. Unless you are paid to spread lies and fear, you aren't benefiting one bit from the hysteria. It doesn't help you, the toxic hysteria only hurts you.
It could be, if we let it go that way. Or we could use this crisis to our advantage, learn from it and restructure things to be better for people in future.
This situation has exposed many problems that were already pervasive but just not as destructive to so many people as they are now showing to be under the stress our social system is being subjected to. The fact that so many people live paycheck to paycheck, that so many have poor access to healthcare, and generally have little to no safety net when times get just a little bad, through no fault of their own.
The pandemic has really shown how undervalued many of the most important workers in our society are and how fragile the systems we have in place are, due to the mismanagement of our institutions and the disproportionate power we have given to very greedy and callous people. We have an opportunity to reject the institutions in their current state and hold those in power to account for the crimes they are committing which are the same crimes they have been committing all along.
and the mid-term: environmental issues caused by the over-consumerism and excessive activity in our societies. We can feel it with those lockdowns, improvement in air quality, noise stress reduction, etc.. those factors cause millions human deaths every year, as soon as this frenzy will start again, let alone for the rest of animals and vegetables
"Let's all become Isaac Newton this month."
Those comments come across pretty tone deaf to me. I imagine the person who wrote it doesn't have any young children and enjoys a relatively high degree of privilege.
Like I said, people die every day. More are going to die during April. It sucks. Make the most of a bad situation. As an individual, nothing you do can move the needle (besides the social distancing and other guidance), so look inward.
There are approximately 40 million US citizens living in poverty. Try going to their houses and telling them that Isaac Newton invented calculus during the plague, so they should look at this as an opportunity for them to learn a foreign language or program an app. You might want to plan an escape route before you do so, though.
A whole lot of millennials don't have children and won't anytime soon. Some of us don't have time, money, savings, security, or desire to do so. Assuming kids is what's tone deaf.